Month: December 2015

It all starts with this wee little stick…I’ve had so much fun with these! Not only have they been the first thing that has told me I’m pregnant (apart from sneaking suspicions) but they have also terrified my husband. Like yesterday, 12 weeks after having our third baby he saw me holding this stick, before a look of horror flashed across his face while he awkwardly spat out “what are you doing one of those for!?” Everything within me was telling me to go with his look of horror and play along, but my conscious made me tell the truth straight away. Darn shame, I could have had fun with that one. However, I’m completely sidetracked now and that is not what this blog is about. Like I said, it all starts with this, a myriad of feelings rushes through you and you freak out while at the same time being completely wowed, overjoyed and thankful…weeing probably never felt so great.

Before you know it your here, expectantly waiting to meet your baby. You wonder what they will look like – you’ve imagined for months and months. And while you feel like you know this baby so well, felt the kicks and rolls and punches, and talked to them every day, you realize you hardly know anything about this baby. It’s a mysterious being growing inside you and nothing makes you more ready to meet them, than the last two months of non stop peeing, penguin waddling, seal rolls in bed, braxton hicks and awkward sex. My husband was pretty excited for it too as you can see.

Now this diagram…this was intriguing! Also a little terrifying and horrifying and hilarious. Great perspective though, I knew you dilate to 10cm but wowsers, I didn’t know it looked like that. There you go! Probably also a little sad that this entertained us for quite a while when we were waiting for my induction to start.

So I was almost 3cm after my doctor came and did the great inspection. He gave me magical gel and left me for a few hours till he came back to break my waters. I got lots of tightening which I tried my hardest to bounce and bounce and bounce on the ball to make them contractions but it didn’t work. I did however get to ace using a contraction timer app on my phone!

This however, was the moment I was waiting for. The great breaking of my waters. And there is the big long hook thing that did it. I’m pretty sure I was eyeing it off and bracing myself for the next few minutes but it actually wasn’t that bad. Phew!

When you have a baby ever ounce of dignity that was ever yours rushes out the front door of the hospital. And I guess when your midwife kindly tells you to put on these enormous, ginormous nappies so you can walk around in labour and not ooz all over the floor, you don’t really have a choice but to put your big girl pants on and labour on. I mean, honestly when I think about it, there are more undignifying moments than this. This was just awkwardly hilarious.

After an hour of contractions, no more nappies (hooray!), and another room change, I was ready to go. There is no greater moment when your in labour than when you’re told you can go ahead and push.

Can I just say how wonderful my husband was. He was totally calm and relaxed the whole time. Infact he was a bit too laid back if I do say so. I remember him cracking jokes and laughing and talking. After a while of pushing and nothing happening, they started prepping me for a cesarean. My doctor told me to stop pushing and handed me the gas which I was completely hopeless at using. I could not suck on it hard enough for it to do anything and after arguing with my doctor that I was sucking on it properly and him telling me I wasn’t, he came right up to me in a contraction and coached me through it. Apparently he was right and I wasn’t sucking it properly because all I remember is sucking really deep, everything spinning and Nic catching me while I started falling sideways off the bed. And much to my disgust I heard him laughing at me! I’d love to say I look like a sleeping angel here…but no, I was more like a vicious lioness about to rear up in roaring thunder any moment…it was just the calm before the storm really.

It wasn’t long after that they wheeled me down the hallway for a cesarean and Aracely suddenly started coming out right at the last minute. She was born within a few big pushes just before we got to theatre…cheeky girl! Nothing describes this moment though…messy hair, sweaty face – I don’t really care. This moment is beautiful, indescribable, and perfect.

And if you’re game, please excuse my amateur power point skills and click on the link of Aracely’s name below to see a video of how our little girl came into the world…don’t worry, it’s only photos and I left the gory ones out!! Enjoy 🙂

Today I had an appointment in Orange, which, at the moment to me is a nice city where you go to do lots of things that your own little country town doesn’t have. To anyone on the other side of the blue mountains, it’s a small country town with a strange fruity name. To me, it’s plenty big enough and it has K-Mart!

I have never been to K-Mart before, and I know it’s not the shop of all shops, but c’mon, I’ve seen the ads, I’ve heard people rave and I just want to see what it’s like. So today, I decided was the day I would sneak on in after my appointment and check it out. Plus, my dear Aunty had sent me some money to buy Aracely a nice gift from her and I was going to do just that! Nic was at home with our two eldest which made me even more thrilled to go, because, since our children reached the age of mobility and exuberant energy, I have avoided going to the shops like I would avoid jumping into the Tiger enclosure at the zoo wearing a suit made of steak. I usually loath shopping anyway, but today I was in the mood to stroll around that chirpy K-Mart shop, pushing Aracely calmly down the aisles in her pram and gazing at all things K-Mart branded. I didn’t have to worry about dragging anyone behind me screaming, I didn’t have to pull anyone off the shelves or from behind clothes racks, I didn’t even have to whisper yell at anyone for poking the shop attendant in the bottom. It was going to be simply blissful.

It was going to be simply blissful once I found a parking spot anyway. I was firstly so proud of myself for finding K-Mart quite quickly without getting lost, but my pride bubble suddenly deflated when I realized it was just the K-Mart tyre fitting place, which I had driven into and was actually driving the wrong way. That was alright though because I reversed my way, quite expertisely may I add, out of the situation and continued on my journey to K-Mart. Oops, missed the right turn off, have to drive around the block and start again. This time, I thought I was super duper clever because I found an underground parking area and drove on in all ready to take over a parking spot and begin my treck around the aisles of K-Mart. Oops, missed the turn to go to K-Mart parking spot and went to Coles instead. That was ok though, I thought I would simply go around to the K-Mart parking place I saw first and park there. Dodge all the traffic (yes, Orange has a LOT of traffic when you’re used to driving the streets of Frobes Ok). There were no parking spots there so I decided to drive around the block and go back to the underground parking area again. This time I went to the right underground parking area for K-Mart, almost got taken out by half a dozen crazy Christmas shoppers driving around, and all to find that there were no parks there anyway. That was ok though! I was not giving up, I decided to just go park on the street and walk. I found quite a tight little parking spot on the street right out the front of K-Mart and swung in like a Pro…sought of. I got out and realized I was half way over where the sign said I should be and I almost just ignored it, but than had a momentary freak out that maybe Orange has some really strict parking police and would give me a nice expensive parking ticket for that. I thought I should get back in my car and park a little better, when I saw a much bigger park just up the road that would suit me perfect! At last! Damn it!…it was a driveway, but that was ok because just up the road a little further, was one last park that I could fit in, which I did. Finally! I was about to step foot in K-Mart – wide open aisles full of pretty K-Mart presents come at me! I popped the boot to get Aracely’s pram out and just as I was about to lift it, this lady pops her head out of the cafe I parked in front of and yelled at me, “it’s parallel parking”. Seriously?? Who makes reverse parking and parallel parking on the same street just metres away from each other? And why did she have to be a big kill joy on my K-Mart adventure? There was no room for me to parallel park and by then I had spent almost 40 minutes driving around, plus Nic needed me back home for work, so I drove off…Oops, I left the boot open. There was no where for me to pull up, cars everywhere, and here I am, a hopeless, K-mart wannabee driving up the main street of Orange with my boot wide open and nothing I could do about it. I don’t usually get thankful for red traffic lights, but today I was. Got out of the car, shut my boot, and needless to say, I’m sitting here on my lounge writing this, and I still haven’t gone to K-Mart.

What is a good blog without a tale of how it all began…so here you go.

Really, it began well before this magical day, the moment I said my marriage vows to the love of my life and committed to stay by his side till the day we die. To be honest, for me it began when I was a 14 year old girl, wandering around a bustling church auditorium, eagerly waiting for a weekend youth camp to begin. For me it began the moment I happened to look up at the front entrance of that church auditorium in time to see this strange boy in the baggiest clothes I have EVER seen and immediately heard my mind tell me, “I’m going to marry him one day.” Well, no idea where that came from, or what I was thinking because I couldn’t even see his face for his enormous over sized big curly hair covering it and I had never seen him before in my life! I guess there was something to it, because as crazy as I thought I was, I could never ever forget that moment. Many years later, many other strange boys later and many moments of me finally hinting mercilessly to this first strange boy with his massive curly hair, he asked me to be his and I said yes…

It took a lot of preparation to begin the tale of the Taylors…it took a lot of camomile tea, a lot of ginger beer, a lot of nervously walking around the neighbourhood on our wedding morning trying to overcome nerves…I didn’t even care that I was in my shorts, a veil and a corset…I don’t really know what I was thinking, but I clearly wasn’t thinking about how you shouldn’t roam the streets in your underwear! It also took a whole lot of this….whatever this is.

And so all this preparation led us to this moment…the one right here. Nothing could adequately explain how you feel walking up to the one you love, just moments away from starting a new life together. Neither could anything adequately explain how precious it was to be led to the moment by my dear father, who all along said he wasn’t happy about letting me go, but in the end was the one who grabbed my hand, said ‘let’s go, it’s ok’ and pulled me down to Nic.

All I remember during the ceremony was that it was beautiful, it really was, but it felt so long! I just remember wanting it to hurry up and get to the vow part so we could be wonderhubby and wifey.

Yes folks, if it looks like gropes galore in the pic below, it probably was.

You know that saying…”what happens in the Lincoln…..stays in the Lincoln!”

That strange boy I saw walking through the door so many years before with big hair and baggy clothes was at last mine and I was his. No more waiting, no more wondering. He led me into something way better than a fairy tale. He led me into a beautiful life of love and joy, of hardships and tears, a life so exquisite and magical, yet real and raw. A life I’m forever thankful for and eternally grateful that strange boy chose me.

Who doesn’t love a good ole childbirth story (I could read them all day) There’s just something amazing about a story that brings new life. I’ve learned something new in each of my birth experiences and every time, I walk away in absolute wonder at how God has shown me more of Him.

I had been amazingly blessed before becoming pregnant with our darling Aracely Luca, with two beautiful births and I was really looking forward to doing it again. My last birth ended up in shoulder dystocia where Lettie’s shoulder got stuck on my pelvis on her way out, and my doctor ended up having to go on in, twist her around and pull her out. Big. huge. OUCH. So at my first few appointments into my pregnancy with Aracely I was given the option of having a Cesarean or going natural again and risking another episode like the last. With a lot of careful consideration and Aracely’s size being monitored, plus seeing a specialist who was absolutely confident a natural birth would be fine, I decided to go natural.

Supernatural Childbirth! That’s exactly what I desired (because dah, who likes pain) but I so much wanted to experience childbirth the way God first intended it to be. I knew it didn’t have to be a daunting, scary and excruciating experience that it so often can be. This is where I learned so much. I remember getting towards the end of my pregnancy and feeling incredibly un-ready to give birth. I went for a walk one night and remember saying “God, I just don’t feel ready for this at all. I haven’t done enough, I haven’t prayed enough, I haven’t declared enough, haven’t prepared enough.” Silly me. His immediate response back was this, “That’s why your not ready, it’s not about you doing, it’s about what I’ve already done.” I stopped still in my tracks and relaxed straight away. Of course it’s not about me doing. My mind set turned completely from not feeling ready to being so rested and at peace…everything I desired for this birth had already been done. I didn’t have to DO anything except REST. I didn’t have to march around the house yelling out my list of what I wanted for this birth, I didn’t have to pray on my knees or my hands or my feet or my elbows 10 times a day, I didn’t even have to beg or plead. No no no, it wasn’t about me doing anything at all except trusting, resting and believing. Simple!

Every anticipating mother to be should know that trying to bring on labour absolutely does not work…unless of course your body is totally ready. But that didn’t stop us trying every darn thing we could think of to induce labour before my induction day…you know, just to humour us. It pretty much confirmed for the third time that nothing works though! To be honest, I was actually quite ok with being induced and it meant I could be pregnant for as long as possible!

I was pretty excited to walk into the maternity ward that morning. We got hooked up to the baby monitor machine to check her heart rate and movements were super duper great when we arrived, and then we waited for my doctor to show up and put that oh so magic cervix gel on. I’ve heard so many stories about that magic cervix gel, but 2 hours later I was still waiting for labour to start. Apart from my uterus having sporadic tightenings, it didn’t feel like much was happening…at all. No matter how much I bounced up and down on the bouncy ball or wished myself into contractions…everything was quiet…very quiet. While we were waiting for my doctor to come back, another lady came to the ward in cracking good labour so I was hurridly rushed out of the labour room into one of the ward rooms so that the other lady could go push her baby out in privacy and not in the hallway. Seeing as the hospital was a week away from moving into a new building, they only had one working labour room. Let’s be honest, it was a little bit entertaining – you know, hearing (not so much seeing) someone in labour and watching her doctor and the midwives race up and down the hallway trying to get her into the labour room before her baby arrived. You just can’t help but feel excited for this lady who gets to meet her baby in just mere moments. Plus, then it makes it feel more real that that will be you in a little while. It wasn’t long after they rushed her up the hallway, before we heard them gushing and aahing over her new baby and I couldn’t wait for it to be my turn.

Finally my doctor came back and broke my waters. My labour started immediately after that with contractions about 3ish minutes apart. They weren’t painful but they were very intense and really strong. Infact it wasn’t until I was almost at transition that they began to hurt. I laid down on the bed for my midwife to check them and didn’t get up after that, they were so strong by then! It wasn’t long after, that I asked Nic to call her back because I was starting to feel that much anticipated pushing feeling. My midwife came in and checked me and I was almost ready to go, so for the second time that day she began rushing around trying to get the other lady who had just given birth out of the labour room, and me into the labour room in time for our baby to be born. They wheeled me up the hallway and into the labour room where she checked me once more and I started pushing.

I was so prepared for the pushing part to be quick. I pushed for three hours in my labour with Chadd and one hour in my labour with Lettie, so I figured our third baby would have to almost fall out right? Wrong! I remember at one stage my doctor asking one of the midwives how long I had been pushing for. She replied “45 minutes.” I was so disheartened then. Every push felt like I was getting nowhere and I was so exhausted and sweaty and pretty gross looking by then. After another little while, My doctor tried to feel if her head was coming down when I pushed – which it wasn’t – and I’m pretty sure my heart completely deflated then. He told me that if I kept pushing for another half an hour we would see a head but he wasn’t sure if her shoulders would be a problem, seeing as her head was taking it’s sweet time to come out. He was trying to encourage me to keep going and it was about then I totally gave up and all but begged him to give me a cesarean. I was honestly in so much pain by then, the fact that even the thought of a cesarean terrified me didn’t matter to me, and all I could think of was how amazing it was going to feel to be numb. Totally and completely numb. I’m pretty sure I kept asking whoever was in the room when they were going to stab me in the back with that huge needle and take the pain away, and I was so mad I had to wait for their team to get together and for me to be taken to theatre to have it. I remember laying there thinking about how this isn’t how I had asked God for it to be, and why was it going this way. But right in that moment, I put all that care aside and completely gave up on God’s promises to me and all that I had trusted for.

I remember one thing I had asked God not long before that day was that I would be fully aware of what was going on around me and completely alert while I was in labour. With Chadd and Lettie’s births I went off into my own world and wasn’t really alert or aware of what was happening in the room and I wanted this time to be different. This time I was so aware. I was aware of almost everything going on around me and what was happening, and my doctor even commented on how alert and with it I was between contractions.

Finally they had a team, and they were ready to go, so they began to wheel me out of the delivery room to theatre. I remember suddenly having a determination to push followed by a big contraction with a really strong urge to push and FINALLY with that push I felt her head start to come down – right in that moment while they were wheeling me down the hallway towards theatre. They pushed me into a room that was on the way to theatre where I was met by a team of beautiful people who immediately began encouraging, coaching and cheering me on. My doctor came in all dressed in scrubs but soon realized he wouldn’t have to anything, and after a few more pushes, Aracely was born!

I was actually so disappointed that her birth didn’t go to my plan. I went through being so mad at myself for giving up and asking for a cesarean, instead of pushing through and not giving up. But after that, I became thankful, so thankful. There was so much joy in that dingy sterile room where Aracely was finally born. Every single person in there was laughing and smiling and chattering, and my bed was completeley surrounded by there happy faces. Every person there was encouraging me, and when I say cheering me on, they absolutely were doing just that. I’ve never experienced something like that. Think 5 year old child running there first ever race and there entire family – you know, mum, dad, siblings, cousins, grandparents, uncles, aunties, were right there on the sidelines, shouting wildly, cheering them on. I’m pretty sure I felt like that 5 year old kid. Until now, I had completely forgotten that I had also prayed for there to be immense joy – uncontainable joy – in the room when Aracely was born. Not that there wouldn’t have been if she was born how I had planned in the labour room with my doctor and midwife, but definitely not in that measure. I also realized that every other prayer I had was answered, I didn’t need stitches, even though after Aracely’s head was out, my midwife turned her shoulders around before delivering the rest of her to prevent shoulder dystocia. She told me after, that it was great I didn’t need stitches because generally you do after that. The placenta came out so quick and easy this time, and afterwards, apart from my still swollen but slightly less rounded belly, I was pretty much like a normal person. I had even prayed just two days before that my ‘you know where’ regions wouldn’t look like a huge blimp after Aracely was born and I didn’t even get swollen. The next day the only thing that was sore was my muscles, like I’d done a nice big workout at the gym (go figure) haha!

When Aracely was born she had a bulge on the side of her head, which I found out that night, showed them that Aracely’s head was turned sideways while I was pushing. That is why she wasn’t budging – she just wasn’t in the right position. So right at the last minute, as they were wheeling me out of the labour room, her head turned down and out she came. All up I was only in labour for one hour until I was ready to push, and the pushing part lasted just over two hours before she was finally born.

I love that I came to the realization, that even though I gave up while I was in labour. I gave up on everything I had asked God for, believed for and rested in, God didn’t once give up on me. He didn’t forget His promises to me, he didn’t give up on me because I threw it in and gave up on Him. He remained absolutely faithful through it all and delighted in giving me what I had asked of Him. And most importantly, in the end, we were blessed beyond measure, holding our beautiful baby girl – completely perfect from head to toe.